Action and anxiety: the long history of settler protest about the nature of Australian colonization

From the earliest years of settlement there were people who heard what one of them called the ‘whispering in their hearts’ or moral anxiety about the nature of Australian settlement. This often had a religious base and became related with the crusade against slavery. There were always people who made themselves unpopular by attacking the way Australian settlement unfolded and the violence on the frontier. They often appealed to opinion overseas and particularly in Britain. In the twentieth century, there was a very productive era of activism linking overseas humanitarian organizations, local activists, unions, the communist party and the Aborigines often in remote areas.